Rogues Studio is a gaming studio redefining social gaming in web3 and beyond.
Rogues Studio is here to accelerate the adoption of web 3 gaming. We aim to reach billions of gamers by creating an easy onboarding to new and unique gaming experiences that redefine the genre.
Rogues Studio’s flagship game, World of Rogues, is a post-apocalyptic social MMORPG game, and is playable on NEAR daily. As seen in our daily Twitch Stream sessions with the community, players login with their NEAR wallet and use their NEAR NFTs as avatars to play in a multiplayer environment. They socialize, gather items, fish and fulfill quests together in a collaborative manner. They also appear on a leaderboard displaying their NEAR wallet, where they see how far they are in line to receive the Season 1’s rewards.
The game launched on NEAR mainnet in April 2023, having originally been on Polygon since the beginning of 2022. Within 1 hour there were 300 NFT minted out in the game itself and immediately playable. We also made our existing Polygon community set up NEAR wallets, and thus convert to NEAR.
Some of our successes in the NEAR ecosystem include:
- Game launched on NEAR Mainnet playable daily
- Community moved from Polygon to create NEAR wallets
- Sold out 1111 Rogues Genesis NFT Collection
- No.3 Trending NFT Collection on NEAR within 1.5 months of launch
- Creation of the NEAR <> Unity SDK Open sourced for WEBGL, Android & iOS
We’ve also received grants from NEAR Foundation as well as Human Guild (summary here) for the development of the game, excluding any marketing activities.
Project URLs
Below are the official links of Rogues Studio:
Website - https://rogues.studio/
Discord (4.5k members) - https://discord.gg/rogues
Twitter (16k followers) - http://www.twitter.com/rogues_studio
Twitch (39 followers) - http://www.twitch.tv/rogues_studio
Youtube (86 followers) - https://www.youtube.com/@rogues_studio
Newsletter (753 subscribers) - https://roguestudio.substack.com/
Linkedin (1052 followers) - https://www.linkedin.com/company/rogues-studio
Whitepaper - http://www.docs.rogues.studio
TikTok (492 followers) - Rogues (@rogues_studio) | TikTok
Instagram (362 followers) - https://www.instagram.com/rogues.studio/
NEAR Social (101 followers) - https://near.org/near/widget/ProfilePage?accountId=rogues.near
TOTAL COMBINED AUDIENCE: 23,385
Our primary audience is English-speaking, and the majority of our global community is based in the United States, UK, Canada, Mexico and Europe, as we’re not targeting a specific country.
Previous marketing activities on NEAR
In addition to the achievements outlined in the first section of this proposal, we’ve also had deep involvement in the NEAR ecosystem.
- Got listed and verified on the major marketplaces / aggregator on NEAR - Few & Far, Paras, Mintbase, Tradeport.
- Collaborated with key projects and communities in the NEAR ecosystem, including Paras, Mintbase, Few and Far, JumpDefi (staking on JumpDefi, and created custom wearable hat NFTs), NEKO, Cheddar.Farm, Paras, Meteor Wallet, Tradeport, Shitzu Community, Boneyard Gaming, MMC, Pr3sence and more.
- Conducted AMAs with the NEAR Foundation, NEAR at Night, Debose, Waxnear, NEAR Koreа, NEAR Horizon, NEAR NFT Club, Near Insider, Nearity, and more.
One Month after minting out, the Rogues Genesis collection continues to get traction. The screenshot is from the time of submitting this proposal, over 30 day period, #5 trending on Tradeport.
Team Members
We are backed by web 2 / web 3 gaming professionals with over 20 years of experience in startups, game development and VR experiences.
Founders
Morgan Page | CTO & CPO
Game developer with more than 30 years of experience. Created a game with over 1.4 million downloads. Has more than 103,000 game development students on Udemy. On NEAR, delivered a course on how to add NEAR to a game that got more than 25,000 enrollments, and created a Unity SDK for NEAR.
Udemy | Linkedin | Twitter
Anna Stoilova | CEO
Product designer, 3x startup founder, 100,000+ sign ups for previous startup, delivered gamified training to World Health Organisation, Qatar Airways, hospitals and school district in the US, and others. Speaker at NFT.NYC and other international web3 conferences.
Linkedin | Twitter
Benjamin Gellie
Metaverse and Tokenomics PhD Candidate, web3 consultant, specialising in DAOs.
Linkedin
Additional team members in the area of art, marketing and community management.
Active community that takes part in the building process, with ideas, competitions, bounties and more.
Anna Stoilova (annastoilova.near), based in the UK, is the applicant for this proposal, and the recipient wallet is Rogues.near. Neither she nor the company has been paid directly to lead or contribute to previous or current marketing DAO projects.
Project Goals
Engagement proven, next is growth. After launching successfully a playable game on NEAR, we’re now looking to grow our player base via additional marketing activities, while we continue our building in public style of development.
We have excellent retention, significantly above industry average, and we are looking to get the word out for new players. We have a system already in place that is working extremely well, we just need to rinse and repeat.
For the period of August - September 2023, Rogues Studio is requesting funding to grow its community of players to a wider audience, and thus bring new players to the NEAR ecosystem.
This way, we can get sustainable usage of the NEAR blockchain in the long term, via an ever growing way of entertainment - web3 gaming.
With the WoR game, the usage of NEAR is on a frequent basis, and any marketing spend that results in players gives a higher return on investment, as these players return to the game frequently and thus use NEAR frequently.
Deliverables
Our strategy is to continue marketing of World of Rogues to attract new players on NEAR via a multitude of channels. For this proposal, we will deliver the following:
1. Game Tournaments (x8)
The tournaments will be fun fishing tournaments for the players of World of Rogues, held twice a week. Each game tournament will be streamed on 8 channels simultaneously: Rogues’ Twitch, Rogues’ Youtube, Rogues’ Twitter, Morgan’s Twitch, Morgan’s Youtube, Morgan’s Linkedin, Anna’s Twitter, Rogues’ Linkedin.
They will showcase multiple players logging in to the game with their NEAR wallets, and provide a prize incentive for additional participation. The prize for the winner will be other NFTs from the NEAR ecosystem, to cross-promote communities.
At least half of tournaments will invite a member of the NEAR ecosystem as a guest, and talk about the benefits of NEAR when it comes to gaming.
Production: $100 x 8 = $800
Rewards: $25 x 8 = $200
Tournaments Total: $1000
2. Twitter Spaces (x4)
Twitter spaces will be held from our 16k Rogues Twitter account, and will have another NEAR project or NEAR thought leader as a guest. This will encourage community growth & ecosystem collaboration. They will also have $20 USDC prize pool for promotion and incentivisation.
Production: $280 x 4 = $1120
Rewards: $20 x 4 = $80
Twitter spaces total: $1200
3. Blog Posts (x4)
The blog posts will share the studio’s progress on its Substack, our progress on NEAR & key developments of the game and studio’s progress. They will serve as a foundation for social media content, and communicate to the the broader community that web3 gaming on NEAR is developing, and games are being built and are growing.
Production: $100 x 4 = $400
Blog posts total: $400
4. Social media content (for 1 month)
Monthly Ongoing social media content, to promote NEAR ecosystem. At least 1 thread / week, using hashtags near & #NEARisBOS
Production (social media staff): $300
Social media total: $300
Total Budget Requested: $2900 in NEAR
With this budget, we anticipate the addition of between 500-1000 additional followers combined on all channels, with 5-10% of these becoming players of the game.
Start date: The starting date of the proposal is Monday 21 August 2023, and the activity will be conducted within 1 month of start date.
Web3 Gaming is an area of blockchain utility that hasn’t stopped growing. By attracting players that are coming back to a game on a daily or weekly basis, the growth of the ecosystem is guaranteed. Our vision at Rogue is create a product that players return to, and expand to players beyond web3. We’ve proven that getting people back is achieved by having a fun, engaging experience that players enjoy, and this results in a high retention. Now, let’s grow the player base, and attract adoption to gaming on NEAR.
Thanks to the marketing team for the review and consideration, and we’re looking forward to growing adoption to the NEAR ecosystem.
